


With Nobody Else But Me

by asuralucier



Series: There's a Hotel Room in New York City (That Shares Our Pain and Deserves Our Pity) [2]
Category: John Wick (Movies)
Genre: Bureaucracy Ahoy, Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, John's Hilarious Lack of Experience, Let's Kill John Wick, M/M, Marcus and Helen are only sort of sane by comparison, No Clean Towels, Orange and Blue Morality, This Hotel Sucks, You can't Have this Tank, kind of?, or die trying, outsider pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:54:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22116691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier
Summary: The petty misadventures of John Wick, terrible concierge, and the people who suffer thereof.(But at least he’s pretty good at keeping the Manager out of trouble.)Please read part onehereif you haven't already because otherwise this will make no sense.
Relationships: Helen Wick/Marcus, John Wick/Winston
Series: There's a Hotel Room in New York City (That Shares Our Pain and Deserves Our Pity) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1389124
Comments: 4
Kudos: 65





	With Nobody Else But Me

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New Year, all! Not sure what I've written here, but I had SO MUCH FUN. JW continues to lend itself so well to canon verse crack because so many things established in universe still make no sense. I hope someone enjoys this. 
> 
> (Also, soz for writing Marcus into everything, he’s my fave.)

There was something to be said about the phrase “keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” Marcus respected that; he even deferred to and abided by its logic a number of times himself because the best way to off someone was at a time when the mark least expected it. 

Sometimes it was even satisfying because maybe Marcus was also That Kind of Guy. You had to be in this business. 

However, Marcus was pretty sure that the saying was in fact _not_ , “keep your enemies close and their genitals even closer,” which seemed to hold truer to this situation at hand than its more sensible predecessor. 

In recent months, since Charon had decamped from New York to Moscow to take up his new post, the Continental in New York had, accordingly suffered a great loss. Charon’s replacement, one John Wick, vouched for personally by the Manager himself, quickly gained a reputation of his own. 

And not a good one, either. 

If Marcus had to wander down to Housekeeping one more time in search of clean towels only to be told that new linens had yet to be ordered because the concierge wasn’t available to sign the necessary papers, he was going to seriously consider offing someone on company grounds in protest. (Why not? Strikes and protests, they worked a treat for other industries. The more specialized the better.) 

...Though it was a tossup whether anyone would actually notice. 

That said, Marcus didn’t want to take away from the things the new concierge did well. John was exceedingly good about keeping the peace on Continental grounds and if you rang up at three o’clock in the morning to air a grievance about noise on the fifth floor, John would be there in a pinch, guns, knives, and once, even a biro at the ready. That was something else John did well, too, he was good at improvising, 

The only thing awkward about that, was that if a guest of the once esteemed New York Continental wanted the concierge to do anything, ringing the front desk got you nowhere. 

Instead, you rang the Manager’s penthouse. 

Somewhere, a phone was ringing. John’s mouth was full, so he made a humming noise that he knew Winston liked to deter him from doing anything that would detract from their current activity, and still the man picked up anyway. As per Winston’s long talent for Management, he was able to do several things at once. Two things at once was hardly a problem. 

Winston made an unimpressed sound, and then said nearly normally with his fingers buried tight in John’s hair. “...Yes? Yes, he’s here, hold a moment.” 

John glared at the receiver for a long moment and let go of Winston with a wet pop. He wiped his mouth and worried his bottom lip for a moment before sucking in a breath. “Hello. Front desk.” 

“The hell it is,” said Marcus, clearly not having any of it. “I want to report a grievance.” 

“...Again? Is it about the damn towels?” John exhaled. He meant to sound as irritated as possible. “Because I have _said_ \--” 

“It isn’t about the towels,” said Marcus. “It’s your favorite. A noise grievance. Bring a biro.” 

John looked down at Winston’s very nice carpet. They’d fucked there recently, but it was a tossup whether that particular stain was leftover from the time he was thinking of. He tried to remember which room he’d stuck Marcus in, and couldn’t exactly, because they didn’t have a memorable argument about it. “I don’t hear anything.” 

“I’m a guest of the Continental. I should file a goddamn complaint.” 

“Shut up,” said John. “Just give me a fucking minute.”

“You get thirty seconds.” 

After John hung up, Winston touched his arm, “All right?” 

“Just a noise grievance,” John shrugged. He swung himself off the bed and let himself be dissuaded for a moment more by Winston’s tongue near his jawline. “Give me a minute. Can we please excommunicate Marcus?” It was worth asking, maybe John would get lucky this time. If nothing else, he was a man of great persistence, and years of experience told him that . 

“It’s whether or not we can declare him _excommunicado_ , John. We’re not the Catholic Church.” Winston admonished gently, but it was hard to take him seriously when he was hard elsewhere. “As we’ve discussed, Marcus hasn’t broken any rules. Rules are sacred around here. We do things by the book.”

“Sure.” 

“Perhaps you could just give him some clean towels,” Winston suggested fairly. “There are some perfectly clean ones in my bathroom. There’s no need to get drastic, John.” 

Unless Marcus was being violently assaulted by a stack of paperwork and nursing the mother of all paper cuts from such an event, John failed to see how a noise grievance was taking place. And to think he’d even brought the guy some clean towels as a gesture of goodwill. 

“The fuck is this?” 

Marcus deadpanned, “Did you bring a biro? Mine ran out of ink.” 

“You _tricked_ me,” John said, turning to go, fully intending to take the towels with him until he heard a telling click at the back of his head, cool metal pressed against his skull. 

“Yes, because us criminals are a real honest bunch,” Marcus rolled his eyes. “Walk backwards, five paces. Hands where I can see them. Try anything funny and you’ll get it. You can set the towels down over there.” 

“Did Winston tell you how I got this job?” John sounded bored; he was bored. But he did put the towels down. 

“You killed people. Nothing I haven’t heard before,” Marcus said shortly. “Plus he fucks you up the ass. Close?” 

Exactly one of those things wasn’t strictly true, but John had a feeling Winston would rather him not spread it around too much. So he kept his mouth shut. Besides, there were other things John and Marcus could stand to talk about. Case in point: 

“What crawled up your ass and died?” John said, “You know this is going to get you excommunicated. Sorry, _excommunicado_.” 

“At this point, I’ll take my chances,” Marcus poked the gun meaningfully into the back of John’s head. “Sit.” 

John did, and glared down at the stack of paperwork, “What is all this?” 

“That’s the bar tab,” Marcus pointed. “That’s for the linens, and that’s your personal correspondence. You should probably actually read through them when I’m not here.” 

“Have you been reading my mail?” John said, more than a touch irritated. 

“They’re mostly grievances,” Marcus countered, “Not exactly private. Now fucking sign, and you can go back to whatever the fuck you were doing.” Before John could reply as to the exact nature of what he’d been doing, he thought better of it, and did as he was told. 

“Well, I could have told you that, sweetheart,” said Helen, sipping soda prettily from a straw. “John is awful with his reports. I’d show you the dreck he’s been sending me but I really wouldn’t wish that on anyone.” 

“You mean, he’s actually calling them reports.” Marcus tried to think about what exactly was reportable about John’s current activities. 

“I’m very flexible when it comes to John. As too, I assume, is your Manager.” 

Marcus made a face. 

There was something surreal about the fact that Marcus now left the Continental sometimes to launder his own towels and meet a government bigwig for lunch. John Wick was _government_. Things made more sense now. Despite Marcus’s initial claims that he didn’t read John’s private correspondence, one particular piece couldn’t help but stand out among the rest. 

It was a piece of unmarked, unlined pastel-colored stationery. It was the first time that Marcus could think of somebody’s handwriting as _pretty fucking furious_. It left the number of a phone booth in a shitty part of town and fairly specific swears about how John was _not doing his fucking job_ piqued his interest.

Marcus figured it couldn’t hurt. At the very least, maybe he’d find a kindred spirit. 

(After the woman finished yelling at him about lackluster reports, Marcus had to come clean about the fact that he wasn’t John Wick, and then Helen had asked him if he was free for lunch.) 

And now here they were. This place served pastrami on chilli fries. 

“And anyway, you don’t get to blame that on us,” Helen gave him a look. “John is...special.” 

“Right,” Marcus said. 

“You don’t believe me?” 

“Oh, I believe you, there’s no doubt in my mind,” Marcus said. “What I want to know is how he got into your gig with no managerial experience. Aren’t the government obsessed with paper?” 

“And here I thought hitmen were all about guns,” she hit back serenely.

“We are all about guns. Sweetheart.” 

“And towels,” Helen quirked. “Apparently.” 

Marcus’s clean laundry was sitting next to him in an unassuming black duffel and he suddenly felt protective of it, the exact same way he would have a newly acquired rifle. He couldn’t say why. “You don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone. Or something.” Charon had left a number and a forwarding address in Moscow but the number hadn’t worked and a postcard seemed inadequate for what Marcus felt like he needed to say. 

“It’s a long story anyway,” Helen said, she glanced pointedly at her watch. “Do you want to come back to my place?” 

“I don’t know, do you have clean towels?” 

“Did you know John Wick works for government?” 

Winston looked up from his crossword. He’d always liked Marcus, but was learning that the man had a strange fascination with clean towels; this rather put a damper on said positive opinion. 

“Yes.” Winston said, keeping it short. 

The whole of Marcus stuttered accordingly with such news, and before he could say anything too inadvisable, he flagged down a bartender and asked for a gin and tonic. The drink was slid in front of him, no mess no fuss, with a twist of lemon. 

“Do you know he _still_ works for government?” 

Winston didn’t, not entirely, but given the fact that John was usually tied up in some way or the other, he didn’t think it was that urgent of a matter. As far as Winston was concerned, keeping John occupied kept everyone happy. “Why do you know that John still works for government, Marcus?” 

“I,” Marcus suddenly seemed very interested in his drink once again. “Just a lucky guess.” 

A dog ran circles around Marcus as he availed himself to a clean towel in Helen’s bathroom. He went out into the kitchen to find her frying up bacon. 

“I overshot it,” Marcus said. “I think they’re onto us.” 

“Us, the sex or vis-a-vis John Wick.” 

“Probably a bit of both,” Marcus said; he was pretty sure that Helen had added the first thing to catch him out, but it wasn’t like he was ashamed of the sex. He sometimes worried about it happening, but that wasn’t the same thing. “What do we do?”

“At this point I consider him a compromised agent. So I have a lot of leeway, paperwork notwithstanding,” Helen said. “Lots of guns and towels. You know how it is.” 

Now, that was a dig Marcus thought was uncalled for, so it was easy enough to ignore. He switched tactics: “Are all of your other agents this crazy?” This Arrangement had worked well enough for both sides so far, but the presence of John Wick as concierge had tipped the scales, long taken as tradition. 

And maybe not in the way that Helen expected, either. 

Most of the time, Helen was pretty good at hiding this. She smiled at him. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours, Marcus.” 

“I have been showing you mine. A lot.” Two or three times a day when they’d had the occasion to meet up. There were times when Marcus thought he ought to worry about that too, but so far he hadn’t had any accidents and Helen certainly wasn’t complaining. He was also beginning to see the appeal of Winston’s strategy but at the same time, decried it because what he was doing was not the same thing. Helen’s very nice cunt, when it was an excitable pink, distracted Marcus just the right amount and never too much. 

“Not what I meant, and nice try.” 

“Right,” Marcus nibbled on a piece of bacon, decided it was too crispy and tossed it to the dog. Before the dog could get at it, Helen snatched it away from her. 

“Don’t do that, she isn’t allowed any.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

Marcus watched as Helen loaded bacon onto some toast. “Don’t you have aspirations, Marcus?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean,” Helen dragged out the word and stepped into Marcus’s personal bubble. It somehow felt more dangerous than sexy this time around, but he could go with both. “You could go far if you help me. Your Manager, Winston, he isn’t exactly a spring chick, is he? Think about what you can do; how clean your towels could be, if you take his place.” 

“You’re both fucking nuts,” Marcus said, faintly. 

“John isn’t the only one who can improvise around here,” Helen said. “I’m sure you’ve got a lot of hungry mice in your corner just dying to come out to play.” 

“Well,” Marcus sighed. He had a plane to catch for a job, but he was suddenly loathed to leave for it, especially if there was no telling if the Continental would still be standing when he got back. 

Marcus was not the type of guy to get sentimental when it came to people, because sooner or later, everybody took one either in the chest or in the skull. Buildings were another beast and the Continental had been a bastion of Marcus’s professional life for as long as he could remember. It wasn’t even the Continental’s fault that people were determined to run it to the ground. John Wick wasn’t Winston’s dalliance by any means, but it was the first dalliance that was on full display to hotel guests by virtue of the concierge really not doing his fucking job. 

So maybe it wasn’t terrible to have a bit of aspiration. Marcus suddenly missed Charon all over again. The man was probably being wasted in the middle of the big Russian nowhere.

Finally, Marcus nodded, “Fine. Then I got a guy I need to go see.” 

“I’ll come with you,” Helen said. 

“No can do. They’re my mice, Madame Government. You stay.” Marcus plucked a piece of acceptable looking bacon off the top of Helen’s toast. “I’ll know if you follow me. Some of us are still paying attention around here.” 

“I hear you have a tank,” Marcus decided to open big. It couldn’t hurt. As far as he was concerned, this was a timely, urgent matter, and he wasn’t going to get anywhere acting precious about it. 

“I do have a tank,” said Viggo Tarasov. “But you can’t have it.” 

It’d been some time since Marcus had had the pleasure to visit the Red Circle. Given the events of the past few months, the place almost looked like a haunted house; same as same of its brethren, if the Continental could be considered such. Viggo, as the club’s proprietor, looked like he’d very much like to drown in the glass of vodka he was currently drinking. Business must be terrible. Marcus could have taken his time to offer some condolences, but he was in a hurry.

“Why?” 

Viggo sighed noisily into his glass. “That tank has brought me nothing but bad luck. I’m thinking of stripping it for parts and selling it to the Serbs.” 

“Can’t you do that after I borrow it for like,” Marcus didn’t know the first thing about tanks. They were big clunking pieces of machinery that were the antithesis of subtle. But desperate times, desperate measures. “I don’t know, forty-eight hours?” 

“Why do you want my tank?” 

“John Wick,” Marcus said. The name did the trick because Viggo straightened up at once. He also seemed to be shocked into sobriety. “Think about it as taking revenge. Don’t you people live for that sort of thing?” 

Viggo regarded him narrowly. “What do you mean, you people?” 

“I,” Marcus started, and then decided it was not in his best interests to keep on offending a guy with a tank. He perched himself on the stool beside where Viggo was sitting. “Okay, fine. I take that back. Can I at least have the contact number for the Moscow Continental? The real number. Not the dummy shit you left me with.” 

“No.” 

“Why not?” 

Viggo picked up his vodka and smirked against its rim. He seemed all too relieved to have the last word. He looked enough like a drowned dog that Marcus was even starting to feel a bit bad for him. “Why do you think?” 

Still. “Fuck you and your tank,” said Marcus, and strode out of the club. 

“You’ve got to stop sending me...” Helen trailed off. She chewed her lower lip as she tried to come up with something more delicate. Finally, she gave up. “Pornography? Please stop sending me pornography, sweetheart, John, all right?” 

“Why’d you change our meet?” John said, looking like he’d heard her question loud and clear, but still chose not to answer her. In the five years she’d worked with him, maybe she’d gotten used to his tells. 

“Somebody recommended the gin selection here, and it’s past two.”

“Gin,” John said. “Who?” 

“Somebody from work,” said Helen. “Someone new. You’d know this if you’d actually showed up to work.” 

“Well,” John was momentarily distracted by Daisy trying to jump into his lap. Finally, John lifted her up. Helen sipped gin and watched him press his nose into her fur. “I am working. You always said the Arrangement was too big to take down from the outside. And I’m still in the Manager’s favor.” 

“Yes, I know that.” 

Helen looked at her watch. The tank was late.

The tank was late because Viggo decreed Marcus couldn’t have this tank. But of course, since nothing ever went wrong in the land of Government, Helen hadn’t actually left Marcus any sensible way of telling her that Plan A was off. Which left Plans B to D because a man was nothing without forward planning. 

“Do you actually know what you’re doing, Marcus?” 

Marcus felt the familiar coldness of a muzzle digging into his scalp. This was a damn shame, he’d rather liked Plan B. Plan B meant he got to show off. He took his attention off his scope and took his hand off the trigger. 

“Do you?” 

“Most of the time,” said Winston. “Did you think I wasn’t going to notice?” 

Marcus sighed, “Given that you’ve let the Continental fall into disrepute? Who the hell knows what you fucking notice. Can I turn around now? I’m getting a crick in my neck.” 

“Stay where you are.” But then he heard footsteps moving behind him and Winston the fucker moved up beside him and adjusted his scope. Marcus felt more violated when he did that than anything else, and he still had a gun stuck to his head. 

“Is that her?” 

“Is that who?” 

Winston didn’t look amused. “Miss Government. Risen from the dead, what’s her name, Helen?” 

Marcus rolled his eyes. “Yeah.” 

“I see the appeal,” Winston said and let go. Marcus felt better, “Still. If her cunt’s that good to convince you?” 

“What’s making you so sure that it’s her cunt?” 

“Marcus, darling, I’m _trying_ to give you the benefit of the doubt,” Winston said. The old bastard was actually starting to sound a little bit put out. “Trust me, my imagination can go much darker places.” 

“Why am I not surprised?” Marcus adjusted his scope to peer through it -- call it reclaiming ownership. The dog was still in John’s lap, seemingly having a grand old time, and Marcus didn’t have the heart to pull the trigger. “Is his dick really that good?” 

Winston shrugged. “It’s passable.” 

“Fucking Christ.” 

Finally, the pressure from Winston’s gun alleviated itself from the back of Marcus’s skull. To his chagrin, he was more relieved than he expected to be. “The Arrangement is evergreen, Marcus. But a little culling, a little reminder of the outside world, that’s not so much a terrible thing. Sometimes, we all crawl up our own arses.” 

Marcus almost said, “speak for yourself” but swapped it out at the last second, just in time: “What the fuck are you talking about?” 

Winston shrugged once more, but this time, gesturing with his gun. It was a nice piece, Marcus was almost distracted by it. “Have we come to an agreement, or do I have to point my gun at you again, hm?” 

“I hope this works out better than your plan with the _tank_ ,” said Helen. She was doing up her toenails over one of John’s “reports.” Marcus read it, and then wished he hadn’t. He’d had to take a shower and bleach his goddamn brain. 

“We can offer to outbid the Serbs and buy the fucking thing,” Marcus said. “Maybe I just caught Viggo on a bad day. Want me to try again?”

“Not really. Do you really know someone at the Camorra?” 

“More than a few someones,” said Marcus, clinging on to the smugness that he felt he rightfully earned just now. It’d been some time, and his ego was bruised. 

“Say we help you,” Gianna D’Antonio said, her eyes bright and keen. “What do we get in return? From the Government. If you forgive me, _Signora_ , you hardly look the part.” 

“Neither do you,” Helen said, and maybe she meant it as a compliment. “We can negotiate after you deliver what we want.”

“No need putting the cart before the horse.” Gianna kept her voice light, but Marcus had known her for much longer, and he was suddenly afraid, for what the lightness concealed underneath. Not a moment too soon, Gianna turned her eyes on him, searching. Telling him he was fucked. Or maybe a little of both. “Have you told _Signora_ Government how we work around here?” 

“I’ll give you New York,” Marcus said, mostly without thinking. Gianna looked nearly mollified, and Helen looked the opposite. 

“New York isn’t yours to give, Marcus,” Gianna said very gently, as if he needed the reminder. 

“But it could be. It will be. If you help us. Helen and I have agreed.” Helen and Marcus had of course, come to no such agreement, but if there was anything that Marcus was fucking tired of reminding people recently, it was that he was a first-class criminal. More people ought to keep that in mind. 

When Winston woke, there was a thick taste of wool in his mouth. There was the edge of something unpleasant clinging too, at the edge of his brain, almost urging him to close his eyes and to go back to sleep. It took some doing, but Winston bit the edge of his tongue; he was hurt in several other places, but the sting to his tongue was quick, immediate, and even fresh and it woke him up.

This seemed familiar. Winston looked around for Marcus and didn’t find him. Which was just as well, because for all the times the man had made big noises about dying, he was a coward and still wasn’t dead. 

“ _Sta 'zitto! Egli è sveglio,_ ” said one of the three men with a gun pointed straight at him. Winston tried to move his hands, even a little, and found that he couldn’t. 

Italians. Interesting. 

“My concierge will come for me,” Winston said, once he’d found his voice. “He’s a very good concierge. He won’t let me come to harm.”

“That’s not the word on the street,” said another one of the men. His English was thick, but the smugness in his voice was universal and perfectly comprehensible. “The word on the street is that your Continental has no clean towels.” 

“That’s what getting around?” Winston blinked. “Right.” 

Then there was a loud blast and the floor shook underneath Winston. Whoever tied him up had done a decent job, because his bonds held. Still, the blast had certainly shaken the men, who immediately whipped around with their guns in hand. 

Then there were three gunshots, evenly spaced out between one another. Then there followed after the last shot, a strangled gurgling noise that left little to the imagination.

After that, the familiar heavy footfalls of boots. From what Winston could make out, they were stained with what looked like fresh blood. John Wick knelt and touched the side of Winston’s face. His lips were moving, but a slow fog, mostly due to his brain not working properly, still clouded Winston’s eyes.

Winston said, “I beg your pardon, what?” 

John leaned in closer and said against his mouth, “Sorry I’m late.” 

“Well, I’m out of ideas,” Marcus said, from his station the next building over. He was mostly trying not to think about how much he was fucking fucked. And yet, there was still that part of him that wasn’t completely surprised. “I could still pull the trigger. But.” 

Helen looked at him narrowly. “But?” 

“Jesus, what _are_ they doing?” 

Helen looked interested, but only for a second, and then she said, “I don’t want to know. What are you going to do about New York? Gianna’s lost fifty men. She’ll probably want New York, or your head on a silver platter.”

As it happened, Marcus didn’t have New York to give away away and rather liked his head where it was. He, like Winston had put it once, was beginning to see the appeal. “Yeah, don’t remind me. You know, I’ve never been a guy with much aspirations anyway.” 

Helen said, “Could have fooled me.” 

Now it was Marcus’s turn to be suspicious. “Really.” 

“So maybe I make it up to you,” Helen looked at him up and down. “I hear Rio’s really nice this time of year, and that they’ve got loads of clean towels. Let’s get out of Dodge.”

For once, Marcus didn't even mind the dig about the damn towels.


End file.
